


The Clone Zone: Where is Everybody

by crowleyshouseplant



Series: The Clone Zone [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 11:55:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6115690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone wanders a small town, wondering where all the people have gone. But are they truly alone or is someone watching?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Clone Zone: Where is Everybody

**Author's Note:**

> I'm watching The Twilight Zone for the first time and five minutes into the first episode I thought, this would make an excellent Clone War ficlet and so here it is.

A figure walks down a neatly paved road. Desert surrounds them. A hot sun hangs still in the sky, slanting their shadow to the east.

They wear armor even though it is hot. It feels right that they wear this for it is theirs and they cannot remember a time without it. They hold a weapon in their hand.

Were they to look at themselves through something with a reflecting surface, they would see that the helmet they wear has a bone-like quality to it. A sleek stripe cuts down the center, and another serves as lenses for their eyes. 

Data scrolls across their vision. Numbers shifting with every step. They can grasp no meaning from this data, though they can't shake the feeling of familiarity, as if it was something they had once known but had forgotten a long time ago. They wonder if the temperature is somewhere there in all that data.

It's so hot.

Sweat seeps through them. 

The hard white edges of the armor chafes very badly at their thighs and arms.

They want to remove their armor so they do. They don't recall when it happened but their hands are free to pull their armored gloves off. They drop in a tiny puff of dust beside them. With their now nimble fingers, they undo the straps holding the chest plate in place, and that also falls free. They take off their helmet, and breathe air. It's not filtered through the mouth piece and they sneeze, deep from their belly. 

They keep the helmet tucked under their elbow in case they decide they should keep wearing it. But, with just a few sniffles that they wipe away with the cuff of their sleeves, their body seems to acclimate to the dust sifting through the air, to the whiff of those delicate little flowers with the orange blossoms growing on the side of the road.

And then the unmistakable smell of food. 

Their belly cinches on themselves. Their hand goes to their naval. They are hungry.

They can't remember the last time they ate. They can't remember the last time they drank.

Even though they are so tired and so sore (from what, though?), they pick up the pace.

Fine grains of sand fall inside their boots, but they push on. They can dump out the sand later, when they're sitting at a nice table in a decent chair.

When they can rest.

It's a little tiny place, but there's smoke ribboning out through the windows. There's even a little bit of music. They go in. They push through the open door.

There's an angled bar and little round tables and simple stools. There's the smell of caf and the smell of something sweet and tangy that makes their mouths water. 

There's no people though. Nobody in their chairs. Nobody switching the music to something more their taste. No running current of words all blending together until it's just sound.

There's nothing but the stillness.

They work up the courage to speak. Their voice cracks like they haven't used their words for a long time.

"Hello?"

No one hollers from the back. There's not even an echo coming back to them.

They heft themselves on the counter and swing their feet around. There's an old rabbit droid in the counter, eyes dull and vacant. There's no power in it, poor thing. 

The kitchen is just as deserted, but there's cold water and they drink it all down and then fill the glass up for more. Some dribbles down their chin. Poking their head out the door so they won't get the floor all wet, they dump another glass of water over their hot skin. The cold runs in freezing rivulets through their hair, down their scalp, and leaves them gasping for breath.

They come back inside, drying off with the towel they found left crumpled up on the counter, like someone was wiping something down and they were called away.

Maybe the war had found its way here like the war always did.

But there would be some proof of that. People wouldn't be missing, wouldn't be vanished, they would be dead. Their bodies would remain. Blaster burns would remain. 

The person, the one traveling down the dirt road disarming themselves and disrobing themselves of their uniform, stands alone in the middle of a kitchen, wringing cold water from their hair, when they notice a smell of something burning.

This is when they find the sweet-sour thing that made their mouths water with how good it smelled billowing smoke from the oven. They save it, and just the edges are singed.

They eat around that, hollowing the center out with a spoon. They close their eyes because it tastes so good. 

They think about paying but when they pat themselves down and find a small pouch with a small number of credits inside, they don't.

It's war. Or maybe it's not war. Whatever is going on, they might need that for later.

They keep walking. Soon, they are in what should have been a town but now is just deserted.

The streets are clean. There are what appear to be schools, stores, even a religious building or two. 

They can't remember going to schools. 

They can't tell if that school is similar or dissimilar to the one they must have attended when they were young.

They pass the shops. The outsides are brightly painted. Advertisements show children licking cold sweet cream, thick with sugar, from their spoons. 

They can't remember their favorite flavor, if it was something like that light green flecked with chocolate, or if it was that pale pastel blue that makes their mouth water with the sweet-sour taste of it.

There are only pictures of the people who once must have lived here. There are no actual people. 

Signs flash deals that no one can take advantage of. Signs tell pedestrians to walk and shuttles to go, but there is no one to follow them.

Recklessly and on foot, the person steps into the middle of the street when the sign is brightly telling them to stop and wait.

But no craft comes. 

There is no one because they are alone. 

Nothing happens because they are completely and utterly alone.

They stand in the center of an intersection, palms behind their head, fingers clenched through their hair.

Their lungs heave in air they cough up moments later.

Hadn't they had a helmet once, something with a mouthpiece to filter the air they breathed?

Their arms are empty now. They don't remember where they've left it.

They don't remember where they've been or where they're going or what's even happening.

They turn in circles until, nearly dizzy, they spy a grounded shuttle. There's a profile in the window. 

Swaying, they stumble towards it. 

The shuttle is sleek and shiny. The sides still warm because the hyper drive is still powering down.

They knock at the viewport and the glass slides open.

The profile is a droid, one of those protocol droids, the ones vaguely humanish with the unblinking owl eyes and the mouthpiece of square perpetual shock.

This one's without power too. 

"It's okay," they say out loud. "Everything's fine," they say out loud again. They wait for the droid to answer back in cool reassurance that of course everything is fine. 

After so much silence, the words sound transgressive and something like shame takes residence inside.

There is a building with an open door behind the shuttle and they go through it. There are more droids in here, battle droids, and they reach for something that is no longer there at their hip, and they are afraid until they see that there is no power charging them.

They are as lifeless as the city.

There is something on the wall behind the row upon row of motionless would-be scrap heaps. They pick their way through, careful not to touch the hanging droids, their skin cringing when each time they hear metal bodies tapping against each other in the wake of their passing.

Once they are free of the droids, they can see what is on the wall clearly. It is a sign of a man whom the person has seen before, but can no longer remember where.

He is flanked with figures dressed in white armor, and there is a bone-like quality to their helmets.

They remember now. They were a soldier once. Maybe they still are, since they had once worn a helmet, just like the painted gaze of the ones gathered in the background behind that very important looking man.

But no. The longer they look, the more certain they become. They weren't just any soldier.

They were a clone trooper. 

Maybe that's why they can't remember the good times lit up in the advertisements flashing from the shops they had wandered by. They'd never had anything like that. Didn't have a childhood like that.

Everyone knew the clone troopers grew up twice as fast and died twice as quick.

The soldier's eyes refocus on the poster.

Do you love the republic, it asks. We want you.

But who could they want when they already had clones?

The soldier stares. Their mouth dries up like the desert they had walked through. 

"My name is CT-27-5555." The words come unthinking from throat to tongue. 

The soldier pitches their voice a little higher. "How many is that?" 

"Twenty because I got four fives." 

They want someone to laugh even though they know it's not very funny. Haha, so many fives. What a lucky number. How did they ever get so lucky. Maybe there's someone else who came before him who'd once been four fours. 

Now that would have been really lucky.

"You picking up what I'm laying down?" 

They wait.

"Five by five."

He turns away from the poster. He can't stand it. He can't stand being all alone surrounded by inactive clankers when he should be surrounded by his brothers.

He cups his hand to his mouth. "Sir?" 

There is no answer. 

He walks out the way he came in. The sun is still high. His shadow is slanted to the east.

Something like panic starts to itch under his skin as he picks up the pace. The streets are all familiar. They all look the same. Even the shops look the same even though their names change each time he passes by.

"Is anybody there?" he calls out.

He walks faster until he's in a slow jog. He know there'a way out because there was a way into this mess, but every corner leads down another block to an ice cream shop.

"My name is CT-27-5555" he says again. He keeps saying it even though it's hard to hear his own voice over the thud of their own heart.

The seppies won't get nothing more.

Obviously, he's been captured. Obviously this is some kind of torture. To force him to blab secrets just to hear the sound of someone speaking, just to not feel so alone.

It would never work.

"My name is CT-27-5555," he gasps out.

He's running now. Sweat plasters his underclothes to his skin. He should never have taken off his armor. Never should have let them see the five tattooed in ink across his temple.

That was too much.

He must have been captured for a while now, judging by the length of his hair. When he finally got out of this mess, he was gonna cut it nice and sharp, like it should be. 

Finally, Fives trips and falls. He bangs his knees against the hard streets, and it feels like it's got durasteel running somewhere when there should have been just the earth on the planet's surface. 

He curses and swears. He drags himself back up again. His heart is racing. His stomach is hungry. 

Thirst carves another hole through him.

But still he runs. He runs in one of the search patterns. He'll find the way out by the process of elimination if he has to. And when he gets free, well there'll be hell to pay.

He runs until he can't, until he hears something that sounds like the warning chimes back home, back on Kamino, but that can't be right because he's been captured, he's behind enemy lines. 

He's not home. He's not safe.

His eyes close as he sinks to his knees, as the city stutters into sloping white walls.

Numbers crack through his lips because this is the end, he's failed and this is the end, they've come for him now, and he's wasted all his strength and he's afraid until he sees the faces of his brothers, some still in their helmets, most not.

"You're alright." Her voice is soothing as hands, so many hands pick him up, carry him, and set him down flat on his back on something soft.

There's no hard ground anymore. Just the whir of the anti-gravs keeping the stretcher afloat.

His eyes crack open. 

There's a woman leaning down over him. Her eyes don't blink, her lips parted as she speaks and he can't tell if she's in his head or if he's not seeing her right. Her lekku are long and there's a weapon slung from the belt around her waist, but he knows she isn't a threat, at least not a threat to him, because he recognizes her, he remembers her, he--

Her palm rests heavy on his forehead, and her touch is cool to the touch. He never wants her to move from his side, and he is ashamed again.

"You did so well," she says. "You have proven your strength."

"Master Jedi," he says, the words coming as easy to him as his numbers did. "I thought I failed. I thought I--" he doesn't want to say but he thinks she knows because she's a Jedi and they know these things. They always know these things. Sometimes, it's like they can see right through you.

"You did not fail." Her words are a clarion call of truth and justice. 

Peace washes over him even as he tries to remember what it was all for. 

"I thought I was alone," he says. He wonders if that's his voice that sounds like it's about to break, like he thought he was about to when the simulation revealed itself for the first time, when it was just the white halls and him exhausted on the ground waiting to be taken away to someplace worse though it was harder to imagine that something could be worse. Even when he thought he was in the hands of the seppies, he thought he had been alone. No one leaves a brother behind, but who really goes back for a clone?

And here he was, never having left Kamino. 

His head cranes as they pass beneath one of the massive viewpoints. Rain lashes against the thick windows. Forks of lightning flash in the sky.

His hand aches and he looks down to see why. He's gripping her hand tight and he wonders that she lets him. 

"You are never alone." Shaak Ti's words come from far away. "The Force is all around us, always with us. Even with you."

He wonders if he could believe that one day.

They bring him to the med center. They put something in him that makes him drowsy and thick. But it's okay because he's home. Just as he drifts off, he remembers why he had been there in that place all alone and by himself.

It was a just another one of their tests. Something to test his mental fortitude under duress. They couldn't have their soldiers breaking if they were caught. The security of the Republic depended on their strength of will.

He remembers now the bets that had been placed for the troopers who had come before him, betting on how many cycles it would take for one of them to break. His last thoughts are wondering who had won the pot staked on him.

He wakes up when its night time, the lights dimmed to a blue glow, the corridors silent and empty. 

He sees no one, and he jerks from the cot, hands twisting in the sheets. His breaths are coming in low and hollow, and he reprimands himself. He's better than this. He's stronger than this.

Something shifts in the shadow and, as his eyes adjust, he realizes that he was wrong.

There is someone with him, curled up in the chair, their feet swinging lazy and free.

Even in the near darkness, Fives knows that it's Echo sitting there, beside him. Waiting for him to wake up. To be cleared for duty.

He sighs and lies back down again. 

He sleeps because there are no dreams and no nightmares because, for now, Master Shaak Ti is right.

He isn't alone.


End file.
